Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/53

 was echoed by another, a woman's “Oh—oh—pl—” broken off in midair, and followed by a gurgle, the sound of blows, a quick, acrid whisper in twangy Cockney:

“Aw! you will, will you? Tyke that!”

“Gawd, Bill! The gell's bit my bleedin' 'and. … 'Ere—stop it, or—go'blyme …”

“Cough up, old cock!”

With the first cry for help. Hector had wheeled in the direction whence it had come—an alley, to the left and slightly in back of him that opened between the squatting, leering houses like a sinister, black maw. A moment later he had rushed into the alley. A dozen yards up, he saw half-a-dozen rough men, typical as to peaked caps and flopping corduroys, holding a well-dressed, elderly man and a young girl, while another rough was relieving them of their valuables. All that he saw in the fraction of a second quite clearly, for a double gas jet was hanging from some mysterious recess over a stable postern, lending to the scene an unearthly light—a sheen of bluish green—like the blue on the green of young cabbages, the ludicrous thought came to him—

A second later he had reached the group, his fists going like flails … “Regular bloomin' young Berserker, he was,” the sandy-haired gentleman, who was still shadowing him and who watched it all from the corner, reported shortly afterwards to Mr. Preserved Higgins, “and, I say, for a moment he had them bluffed.”

But not for long.